Face Makeup

Those grooves, milling designs and patterns on your putter face? Cool looking, right? But they’re not there simply for cosmetics, not when making putts (and taking fewer of them) is such an important part of the game.

If you were given two driver faces — just the faces — and asked to contrast them, how different would your descriptions be? If you were given the faces of two seven-irons and asked to do the same, what disparities could you really point out? Not many, right?

The unique visual characteristics of a driver lie chiefly in its sole and, occasionally, its crown. Irons are identifiable first and foremost by their backs, with the keen eye possibly being able to decipher different groove patterns. Putters are a different story. Sure, they come in a variety of shapes, sizes and colours, but the face of one company’s putter versus another’s is as distinct as yours against a friend’s. And every insert or milling design is done with a specific reason in mind, though competing club engineers don’t necessarily agree on what face characteristic is paramount in helping people make more putts.

There would appear to be three camps here. There are those who build putter faces primarily to improve a ball’s topspin rate; there are those who do so with speed control top of mind; and there are those who are concerned with feel above all else. There’s some dual purposing going on too, of course, and like most advancements in golf club design the technologies being conjured here are ingenious.

TOPSPIN

Two heavyweights that fall into the topspin category are TaylorMade and Callaway.

For Callaway, which introduced its O-Works (Odyssey) line of putters this year, the aim was to improve upon Fusion RX, which was a wire-mesh faceplate made of little ovals featured in its Odyssey Works models. To do so, chief designer Austie Rollinson and his team created something called a Microhinge Face Insert, which is a stainless steel plate featuring small nubs or hinges that gently flex inwards upon contact with the ball and outwards upon its release, thereby imparting topspin at a rate that Callaway says is double that of Fusion RX. The Microhinge Insert is co-moulded to a Thermoplastic Elastomer Feel Layer for enhanced feel, but because it’s made of steel it also provides the sound and response that players seek. Phil Mickelson, for one, put the putter in play immediately.

“Topspin really helps smooth out the roll right off the putter face,” explains Rollinson. “All putters have loft so the ball will hop a little bit. If the ball has backspin it will sometimes check and start bouncing. If you have forward roll the skid will be shorter, but also it will be smoother, less bouncing, so it will be more consistent. If you have consistent skid you will have consistent overall distance.”

TAYLORMADE

SPIDER TOUR RED

Pure Roll insert with downward-angled grooves grab the ball at impact and impart immediate topspin. High moment of inertia thanks to perimeter weight, and removed sightline to zero in the player’s focus. Available in black and platinum colours, too.

TaylorMade’s insert is called Pure Roll and features grooves that are angled downwards at 45 degrees that impart topspin on a ball when it is hit with an ascending strike. Bill Price, TaylorMade’s senior director of putters and wedges, makes no bones about the importance of topspin and points to the improved putting of TaylorMade staffers Jason Day and Dustin Johnson — both of whom use TaylorMade’s Spider Tour model — as evidence that a face designed to help with roll is vital. He says TaylorMade testing reveals a ball gets into its “pure roll” anywhere from 10 to 25 per cent of the length of a putt after contact. Day, for example, is able to get his ball rolling perfectly with no wobbles four feet into a 40-foot putt.

“We can add 50 r.p.m. of topspin to your putter with this insert,” Price claims. “Whoever you are, if you’re a backspin guy we can get you closer to a topspin guy and that’s what every – body is looking for in putting. Topspin is very, very important. ”

SPEED CONTROL

It’s not as though companies who design putter faces without topspin in mind don’t understand its importance. It’s just that they believe proper topspin is best achieved by other means, specifically a low and back centre of gravity (the bulk of a head’s weight) and proper fitting.

PING fits this description with the grooves in its True Roll face insert having nothing to do with spin, according to Paul Wood, the company’s VP of engineering.

PING

SIGMA G ANSWER

Combines new insert made of highly responsive Pebax elastomer with True Roll face groove technology. Result is equalized ball speeds across entire face for both added forgiveness and feel characteristics.

“People see grooves on a putter and they assume they’re about getting the ball rolling fast. That’s not what we’re doing, that’s not what we’re trying to do with our grooves,” Wood says. “We’re trying to normalize ball speed, and the fact that it is a groove or looks like a groove is incidental; it’s a technology for normalizing the ball speed.”

What PING’s research has shown is that grooves on a putter face slow a golf ball down because they decrease the amount of surface contact between the face and ball. Couple that with the basic physics fact that more energy is transferred into the golf ball when it’s struck with the centre of the face, or the putter’s sweet spot, and one understands why PING began experimenting with trying to equalize speed between balls hit centre-face and those hit off-centre. It did so with variable depth grooves, designing a complex — and cool looking — groove pattern with deeper millings in the centre and shallower ones towards the heel and toe.

“That means when you’re facing a 30-foot lag putt you just concentrate on judging the distance and hit it, and if you mis-hit it slightly you’ll still get the same roll-out. That’s what it’s trying to solve,” says Wood.

PING introduced this technology in its Scottsdale TR Series and married it to an elastomer insert made from a material found in athletic shoes in its new Sigma G putters as a way to enhance feel.

EVNROLL

ER5

Dubbed the “Sweetest Face in Golf,” precise face millingproduces more energy transfer on putts hit off-centre due to more groove spacing towards heel and toe of putter than in centre. Made of 303 stainless steel.

Speed control is also the aim behind EvnRoll putters, designed by Guerin Rife, who founded his eponymous company Rife in 2000 and sold it six years ago. It was Rife, in fact, who first implemented grooves on a putter years ago, and similar to PING, the faces he’s built for EvnRoll are about improving roll-out on mis-hit putts.

“Probably 98 per cent of the time people mis-hit putts to some degree or another,” Rife says. “Rarely do they hit that perfect spot in the middle.”

Whereas PING varied the depth of its grooves, Rife varied the width, with wide grooves in a putter’s centre exposing less surface to the ball and skinny grooves towards the heel and toe exposing more.

“What I know is that grooves don’t hit the ball as far as no grooves,” Rife explains. “This putter hits the ball harder where it’s weaker and softer where it’s stronger so everything goes the same distance.”

FEEL

Without question, feel is an integral part of the design of any putter. That’s why PING incorporated that running shoe material in Sigma G, called Pebax, why Odyssey’s new models have that Thermoplastic Elastomer Feel Layer, and why TaylorMade’s True Roll insert is made of soft polymer.

TOULON DESIGN

MADISON

Classic head design with full-shaft offset and mid-slant hosel for smooth neck to head transition. Best for arcing strokes thanks to 45-degree toe down build. Deep diamond milled face pattern produces smooth feel upon contact.

Toulon Putters, created by ex-TaylorMade executive Sean Toulon and now under Callaway’s umbrella, feature a Deep Diamond Milling pattern inspired by tire treads that’s all about achieving perfect sound and feel. And as any club designer will tell you, feel is directly related to sound. Cleveland’s Huntington Beach Collection putters have a very intricate deep milling that Jon Rae, VP of research and design, says is all about softening contact.

CLEVELAND

HUNTINGTON BEACH 3

Coarse, diamond shaped milling pattern is four times deeper than previous putters, causing increased friction for better roll. Classic design is made of 303 stainless steel for soft feel.

“If you thought about it at a really small, micro level, you’ve got the surface of the ball touching the surface of the face,” says Rae. “The more of that contact there is, the harder the club is going to feel. By using a deeper milling pattern we can get fewer points touching the ball and as a result it leads to a softer feel and little bit truer roll.”

Then there are Titleist’s Scotty Cameron putters, probably the world’s most famous flatstick franchise. While past models have included deep milling patterns on the face to provide that less-surface-contactequals-softer-feel effect, his newest models have a mid-milling pattern, with more focus placed on a new vibration dampening inlay made of proprietary material positioned between the putter’s stainless steel body and aircraft aluminum grade face to soften and tune feel. It almost acts as a shock absorber, explains Mike Bradley, director of marketing for Scotty Cameron Putters, with the material also containing adhesive properties to help join the body and face together. Bradley says it’s used in industries that require a reliable method of holding pieces of metal together under extreme conditions.

“Very strong, very resistant to changes in climate and temperature, so if you’re travelling with your clubs, if you’re flying with your clubs, you’re going to get very consistent performance over a long period of time.” As for topspin characteristics, Cameron’s research shows there is no substitute for being fit by an expert.

“What Scotty has found in the studio is the biggest factor in getting a putt rolling in the proper manner is getting a player fit to the proper putter, proper length, and set up properly,” says Bradley. “It’s a combination of matching the right putter to the player, proper setup, and those are the factors that get the ball rolling in the proper way.”

So do putter face pat – terns play a role in your, um, roll? Depends on who you ask perhaps, but it’s certainly worth checking out the various designs on the market to see what exactly works best for you.